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At the Movies

By Lawrence Van Gelder

Published: December 21, 1990

<> From Death to Gold When it comes to successful -- make that highly successful -- screenwriters turning to directing, Bruce Joel Rubin is not to be overlooked. That's also Bruce Joel Rubin the alchemist, the one who managed the feat of turning death into gold not once but twice in 1990. First he did it with "Ghost," the romantic tale of a man who returns from the dead to protect the woman he loves from his killer. It became the year's big box-office hit. And then he did it again with "Jacob's Ladder," the eerie tale of a Vietnam soldier's life and death that ascended to the very top of the weekly moneymakers before settling back. "What I'm trying to do is a film called 'My Life,' " Mr. Rubin said. "And it is a film about life and death in an American family. But I refer to it more than anything as a celebratory movie. I'm still in the early stages of writing it." No, Mr. Rubin said: "It is not an autobiographical film. It's a personal film, but not autobiographical. But every film I write is personal. They come from deep inside. I'm writing about things that mean a great deal to me. "People look at 'Ghost' and think of it as a fantasy film. I very firmly believe that life is not bracketed by the experience of being born and dying, but that we pre-exist our lives and continue to exist beyond them in infinite time and space. "I do tell people when they criticize me as being death-obsessed that I'm life-obsessed, but I do not believe life means anything unless you have accepted the reality of its completion." Mr. Rubin, who was born in Detroit in 1943 and grew up there, moved to New York City when he was 18 years old and studied film making at New York University, where his classmates included Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese. "From the age of 5, I wanted to be a film maker," Mr. Rubin said. "I loved movies. They were my primary passion. Everyone was looking at girls. I was looking at movies. I loved the size and scope of movies. I felt you were really in the realm of the gods." Mr. Rubin said he found the prospect of directing "My Life," which he will also produce for Paramount , "very scary." "For me now," he added, "writing is also very scary because now people expect something." But he noted that as an associate producer of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder," he was able to stand next to the directors, Jerry Zucker and Adrian Lyne, particularly Mr. Zucker, who directed "Ghost." "I was able to observe the process firsthand, so it was no longer quite so scary." Hollywood, he asserted, has no apprenticeship system: "Here's $20 million. Don't blow it." But he noted, "I always had a suspicion in my younger days that directing was my calling and that writing was just a means to that end."">

Rock-and-Roll Pals

With plans for a timeout over Christmas, Simon Wincer, the Australian-born director of the Emmy Award-winning mini-series "Lonesome Dove" and such movies as "Phar Lap" and "Quigley Down Under," has been busy filming "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man."

Mickey Rourke plays a philosophical drifter, Harley Davidson, and Don Johnson plays his buddy, the Marlboro Man. And in the story, written by Don Michael Paul and set in Burbank, Calif., in 1996, they team up to save a friend's rock-and-roll saloon.

"It's very contemporary," Mr. Wincer said of the film, which is being made for Pathe Entertainment in Tucson and Los Angeles, "and the last two films I've done, 'Lonesome Dove' and 'Quigley Down Under,' being big period westerns, it was nice to get involved with something that has real horses like motorbikes."

Mr. Wincer said he also liked Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. "They are a couple of characters who are clinging to old-fashioned values in this very changing world of ours," he said. "The little man has just as much right to survive as the multi-nationals, so to speak."

Besides directing a film set in 1996, Mr. Wincer is looking to the future in other ways. A few years from now, he said, he hopes to make a film based on the Lee Falk comic strip "The Phantom." But late next year, he expects to begin filming "Boswell for the Defense," set in Hogarthian London and based on a Patrick Edgeworth play. Mr. Wincer said Leo McKern, who starred in the London production, would play the role of James Boswell.

"It's a true story about Boswell," Mr. Wincer said of Samuel Johnson's biographer, "who, as a lawyer, represented a girl called Mary Broad, who went to Australia with the first fleet as a convict."

"And because conditions were so bad there," he continued, "she escaped in a rowboat and rowed to Timor. She was caught there and sent back to London for trial, and he got her off.

"It's a wonderful, very moving story about a man who is in the autumn years of his life who goes to bat for somebody who's younger but very appealing."

<> <> From Death to Gold

When it comes to successful -- make that highly successful -- screenwriters turning to directing, Bruce Joel Rubin is not to be overlooked.

That's also Bruce Joel Rubin the alchemist, the one who managed the feat of turning death into gold not once but twice in 1990. First he did it with "Ghost," the romantic tale of a man who returns from the dead to protect the woman he loves from his killer. It became the year's big box-office hit. And then he did it again with "Jacob's Ladder," the eerie tale of a Vietnam soldier's life and death that ascended to the very top of the weekly moneymakers before settling back.

"What I'm trying to do is a film called 'My Life,' " Mr. Rubin said. "And it is a film about life and death in an American family. But I refer to it more than anything as a celebratory movie. I'm still in the early stages of writing it."

No, Mr. Rubin said: "It is not an autobiographical film. It's a personal film, but not autobiographical. But every film I write is personal. They come from deep inside. I'm writing about things that mean a great deal to me.

"People look at 'Ghost' and think of it as a fantasy film. I very firmly believe that life is not bracketed by the experience of being born and dying, but that we pre-exist our lives and continue to exist beyond them in infinite time and space.

"I do tell people when they criticize me as being death-obsessed that I'm life-obsessed, but I do not believe life means anything unless you have accepted the reality of its completion."

Mr. Rubin, who was born in Detroit in 1943 and grew up there, moved to New York City when he was 18 years old and studied film making at New York University, where his classmates included Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese.

"From the age of 5, I wanted to be a film maker," Mr. Rubin said. "I loved movies. They were my primary passion. Everyone was looking at girls. I was looking at movies. I loved the size and scope of movies. I felt you were really in the realm of the gods."

Mr. Rubin said he found the prospect of directing "My Life," which he will also produce for Paramount , "very scary."

"For me now," he added, "writing is also very scary because now people expect something."

But he noted that as an associate producer of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder," he was able to stand next to the directors, Jerry Zucker and Adrian Lyne, particularly Mr. Zucker, who directed "Ghost." "I was able to observe the process firsthand, so it was no longer quite so scary."

But he noted, "I always had a suspicion in my younger days that directing was my calling and that writing was just a means to that end."

Photo: Simon Wincer (Barry Peake/MGM)

<> From Death to Gold When it comes to successful -- make that highly successful -- screenwriters turning to directing, Bruce Joel Rubin is not to be overlooked. That's also Bruce Joel Rubin the alchemist, the one who managed the feat of turning death into gold not once but twice in 1990. First he did it with "Ghost," the romantic tale of a man who returns from the dead to protect the woman he loves from his killer. It became the year's big box-office hit. And then he did it again with "Jacob's Ladder," the eerie tale of a Vietnam soldier's life and death that ascended to the very top of the weekly moneymakers before settling back. "What I'm trying to do is a film called 'My Life,' " Mr. Rubin said. "And it is a film about life and death in an American family. But I refer to it more than anything as a celebratory movie. I'm still in the early stages of writing it." No, Mr. Rubin said: "It is not an autobiographical film. It's a personal film, but not autobiographical. But every film I write is personal. They come from deep inside. I'm writing about things that mean a great deal to me. "People look at 'Ghost' and think of it as a fantasy film. I very firmly believe that life is not bracketed by the experience of being born and dying, but that we pre-exist our lives and continue to exist beyond them in infinite time and space. "I do tell people when they criticize me as being death-obsessed that I'm life-obsessed, but I do not believe life means anything unless you have accepted the reality of its completion." Mr. Rubin, who was born in Detroit in 1943 and grew up there, moved to New York City when he was 18 years old and studied film making at New York University, where his classmates included Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese. "From the age of 5, I wanted to be a film maker," Mr. Rubin said. "I loved movies. They were my primary passion. Everyone was looking at girls. I was looking at movies. I loved the size and scope of movies. I felt you were really in the realm of the gods." Mr. Rubin said he found the prospect of directing "My Life," which he will also produce for Paramount , "very scary." "For me now," he added, "writing is also very scary because now people expect something." But he noted that as an associate producer of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder," he was able to stand next to the directors, Jerry Zucker and Adrian Lyne, particularly Mr. Zucker, who directed "Ghost." "I was able to observe the process firsthand, so it was no longer quite so scary." Hollywood, he asserted, has no apprenticeship system: "Here's $20 million. Don't blow it." But he noted, "I always had a suspicion in my younger days that directing was my calling and that writing was just a means to that end."">